Two British astronomers, Paul Cresswell and Richard Nelson, will present new computer simulations of how planetary systems form.
They find that, in the early stages of planetary formation, giant protoplanets migrate inward, locked into mutual orbital resonances, towards the central star....

New theoretical work shows that gas-giant planet formation can occur around binary stars in much the same way that it occurs around single stars like the Sun. The work is presented by Dr. Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institutionís Department of Terrestrial Magnetism (DTM) at the American Astronomica...

A 1976 study published in the journal Nature showed that strange Xenon, which is made in supernova explosions, is present within the composition of the Sun. Those findings by the UMR and Grambling team were largely dismissed. Now, in the March 31 2005 issue of Nature, a Japanese and French team repor...

Title: Evidence for dust accumulation just outside the orbit of Venus Authors: Ch. Leinert, B. Moster To contribute to the knowledge of dynamics of interplanetary dust we are searching for structures in the spatial distribution of interplanetary dust near the orbit of Venus. To this end we study t...

Here's a strange scenario: You move farther away from a fire, getting cooler and cooler, until suddenly you are burning up. That's essentially what happens in the sun: Its outer layer, the corona, is inexplicably hot. A new study may complicate things further by poking holes in a leading theory that...

Researchers say they have found the first evidence that the frozen outer reaches of our solar system could be littered with many more objects than we think.
Astronomers have been trying to get a picture of the region, known as the Kuiper belt, because it is believed to contain debris from the birth o...

Subtle variations in the cosmic microwave radiation left over from the Big Bang may finally reveal the distant Oort Cloud, thought to send comets hurtling into the Solar System. Since the 1930s, astronomers have theorised that a spherical shell of icy objects surrounds the Solar System, 50,000 to...

Astronomers from Australia, Germany, the UK, Canada and the USA have come up with a new way to weigh the planets in our Solar System, using radio signals from pulsars. Measurements of planet masses made this new way could feed into data needed for future space missions. Until now, astronomers have we...

†Sun too sluggish to act as a cosmic Concorde The sun is no cosmic Concorde. Our star is moving through a cloud of interstellar gas too slowly to create a "sonic boom" that would shield the solar system from some galactic cosmic rays. The finding could help determine whether the sun's previ...